So you think you can afford the cost of running a wire from your house all the way back to the generation plant? Let's not forget the transformers, safety mechanisms, rights-of-way, poles to erect or trenches to dig and pipes to lay. Not to mention the cost of mining or reclaiming copper, extruding it into wire, and wrapping it with insulation. No, you can't use that pole or pipe that's already there, because you didn't pay for it.

I guess really you ought to build your own generation plant as well; we can't have any electrons flowing to your house for which your own money is not responsible.

Not likely. At least in my state, you're in heaps more trouble if you shoot to injure rather than kill, as it undermines the "imminent threat" defense. If that operator has a gun and is any good with it, the OP will be dead, dead, dead.

The log jam here is at the point where the vinyl is pressed. There is an oversupply of content (or, rather, requests for pressings, i.e. logs) being served by too few manufacturing facilities (i.e. the river). Perhaps not the most apt metaphor, but not the worst.

Maybe it's just the temperature sensor, which is monitored by the system, so if there is any problem with the battery overheating, the safety does not trigger?

I'm pretty sure there's something to this. Periodically my iPhone 5S becomes hot enough to be very uncomfortable to hold while charging, and a power cycle cures the issue. Personally I think it's awfully daft to have something as important as a Li+ battery temperature sensor dependent upon the OS rather than being a separate, independent component.

If memory serves, that's because it was Michael Chertoff's company (you know, the Director of Homeland Security at the time) who sold the machines to the TSA.

What just blows my mind is how this is even possible. There should be somebody somewhere that signs the checks and goes "oh, you're the head of this government agency and you also own this company that you want the agency to buy from? Nope." In lesser circles I believe this would be considered a conflict of interest...

I think you accidentally a word. Assuming you meant "just stop paying the bill," how would you then recover from the economic bitch-slapping they'd hand you by turning your account over to a collections agency? How would you recover your credit rating? How would you get out from under the liens placed on your property due to nonpayment? I'm certain your contract's fine print exposes you to all sorts of nastiness should you fail to pay the piper.

Did you drop a zero? I haven't read the article, but $190/mo for 100/20 is super-cheap and not at all what I would expect for a commercial service. 'Round these parts, that kind of service would run you over $2,000/mo.

I think you missed an important point. It was not the owner who broke the rules, but a delegated operator (for lack of a better term). Your example would be more precise in saying your friend drove your car at 127 MPH through a school zone, therefore YOU are no longer allowed to operate your car (while your friend merrily goes on continuing to operate his own car).

It's more complicated than that, even, since the nephew in question was [probably?] operating under the uncle's username; if so, that does swing the Finger of Blame(TM) back toward the uncle somewhat for permitting someone else to use his account.

Still, my opinion is that it would be quite reasonable for Valve to block online multiplayer play for some period of time, but to prevent local gameplay is a major overstepping of reasonable bounds.

That said, I will undoubtedly continue to purchase Steam-powered games. Baaaaaaah.

It's not like computer storage where you can read the same data over and over without fear of tampering with the original content.

I give you SDRAM, wherein the read operation does indeed damage the stored data, so that the memory controller has to immediately rewrite any row it reads (not to mention the constant general refreshes).